Louisiana Flooding The biggest rainstorm in the history of the continental United States finally began to move away from Houston on Tuesday, as the remnants of Hurricane Harvey and its endless, merciless rain bands spun east to menace Louisiana instead.
A storm surge warning for the coast from Holly Beach to Morgan City, La., said water levels could rise two to four feet above normally dry land when the center of the storm approached for a second landfall Tuesday night, The Post’s Capital Weather Gang reported. To the east, New Orleans was under a flash flood warning Tuesday morning.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said in a news conference Tuesday to “prepare and pray.”
Louisiana Flooding
In the deluge, a mother and child got out of their car on a flooded freeway service road and were swept away. The child clung to her mother for half a mile. Police and firefighters got to them just before they went under a trestle and were lost for good. Only the child survived, police said.
After more than 50 inches of rain over four days, Houston was less of a city and more of an archipelago: a chain of urbanized islands in a muddy brown sea. All around it, flat-bottomed boats and helicopters were still plucking victims from rooftops, and water was still pouring in from overfilled reservoirs and swollen rivers.
Between 25 and 30 percent of Harris County — home to 4.5 million people in Houston and its near suburbs — was flooded by Tuesday afternoon, according to an estimate from Jeff Lindner, a meteorologist with the county flood control district.
Across Houston on Tuesday, there were some new reasons for hope: the rain turned from sheets into mere drops. Fast-food outlets reopened. When a downtown convention center became a shelter for the displaced, volunteers lined up around the block to help.
